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How many phallic symbols does the world really need?

And so another month, another contender for the title of "world's tallest building" – pushing its sharp glass snout up through the atmosphere, like a meerkat raising itself to its fullest feasible height amid the dirt of the Kalahari Desert. Only rather significantly taller.

This is the sun-baked state which already has the planet's loftiest building in the form of the Burj Khalifa – the spear of modernity which soars to 2722ft (830m) in the most famous segment of the United Arab Emirates. At a still-undefined moment in 2020, it will be surpassed by a new kingpin – an as-yet unnamed tower in the Dubai Creek area, which will cost some £710m, and be "a notch taller" than its colleague.

Another CGI of what could become the world's tallest building in 2020

Forgive me for greeting this announcement with a wearily raised eyebrow and a loud sigh of exasperation. Is it not grotesque – in a period when the world is wracked by war, terrorism, the largest migration crisis since 1945 and gross financial inequality – for such a vast amount to be spent on a construction whose main purpose is to be just a little more overreaching and a little more swollen than the last construction which broke records in being overreaching and swollen?

Of course, that isn't this record-breaker's official raison d’etre. We are told that it will contain offices, shops, restaurants and a luxury hotel. But really, it is not about accommodation or food – it is about being bigger than the other guy.

It is difficult to say exactly when it happened – but the idea of the world's tallest building has lost touch with reality. Perhaps the two were never on speaking terms. Yet there was surely a time when the concept of a landmark bigger than everything else came imbued with beauty, romance and an actual use that the visitor on its doorstep could relate to – rather than chiming with the hard edge of glinting steel and ambition for ambition’s sake.

Take a look at the historic list of buildings which, at one time, could claim this accolade.

For the best part of a millennium, they were churches and cathedrals – high-rising piles of penitent observation which brought a decisive note of grandeur to the cities that framed them: Our own Lincoln Cathedral, which held the title between 1300 and 1549 – when its spire, which is thought to have reached an altitude of 524ft (159.7m), collapsed. Rouen Cathedral, the Normandy temple which so enthralled Monet – and wore the crown at 495ft (151m), between 1876 and 1880. Cologne Cathedral, that behemoth of the Rhine, which still looks like a giant today – even if the 516ft (157m) measurement which put it on top of the tree between 1880 and 1890 has long been beaten. Ulm Minster, another German wonder – a spectacular Gothic statement, in the south of the country – which stood as the tallest of them all between 1890 and 1901, rearing its head at 530ft (161.5m).

Rouen Cathedral still towers over the city

Whatever your opinion on religion, there is no doubt that the likes of Lincoln Cathedral and Ulm Minster were, at the time of their supremacy, central to the societies and cities in which they existed – craning their necks upwards to the glory of a god who most people agreed was quite a big deal. But the dawn of the 20th century brought with it the start of a gradual disconnection between the biggest architectural visions and the men and women in the street who would have to walk past them. This, for the most part, was the American century, the advent of Philadelphia City Hall – a mould-smasher of 548ft (167m) – hailing the start of a fresh epoch of cash and influence on the other shore of the Atlantic.

Then came a host of increasingly enormous skyscrapers in its broad wake – that New York jewel the Chrysler Building tipping the scales at 1,050ft (319m) between 1930 and 1931; the 1,250ft (381m) Empire State Building, streaking past between 1931 and 1972; Chicago’s contribution to the debate, the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower), overtaking them both at 1450ft (442m) between 1974 and 1998.

The Art Deco Chrysler Building

But while there is no denying the grandeur of some of these uber-edifices – the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings were and are Art Deco titans, as delicate and decorated as they are strong and sturdy – America's construction boom changed the game. Where once architectural leviathans served their setting, now they were preening popinjays which looked down upon them. And so it proved with the next raft of cloud-botherers, a chorus line of Asian exclamation marks indicating that the planet’s economic axis was tilting to the east – the Petronas Towers (the world’s tallest building between 1998 and 2003; 1488ft/452m) in Kuala Lumpur; the Taipei 100 in Taiwan (2003-2010; 1671ft/509m); the Burj Khalifa (since 2010) – impressive feats of engineering without doubt, but also non-literal ivory towers of almost no relevance to their context beyond being Very Big Indeed.

Kuala Lumpur

I have had the pleasure of visiting the observation deck at the Burj Khalifa. It waits on the 148th floor, at 1,821ft (555m). This is such an extreme elevation that the view you take the interminable lift ride upwards to see is reduced to nothingness. From so far above the ground all detail and perspective vanishes. Everything is tiny, distant. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to London’s Shard, Britain’s and (as it stands) the European Union’s highest building (at 1,016ft/309m) – where, in my opinion, the panorama seen from the restaurants on the 31st and 32nd floors is more enjoyable than the supposed showstopper visible from the public space on the 68th, 69th and 72nd floors, by dint of the fact that you can make out the scene below you without needing some sort of zoom lens.

When we have reached a stage where buildings are becoming tall enough to become a theoretical hazard for aircraft, we have entered the realm of the ridiculous. Take a look at the designs for this latest Dubai slab of grand-standing. What does it look like? Does it not have a hint of the phallic? Then consider the fact that, if it is completed to schedule, this newcomer will be master of the universe just long enough to be eclipsed by the Kingdom Tower, which is due to stride into the ring in the Saudi city of Jeddah – at 3307ft (1008m) and a cost of £800m – in the same year. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are, of course, neighbours and rivals – to the extent that they are currently embroiled in a dispute about the exact route of the border between them which has dragged on for decades. So ask yourself whether their competing skyscrapers are wonderful flights of architectural fancy, or just two rich chaps standing at the urinals comparing notes on size.

Where will this end? Not at a kilometre-high building, certainly. Because plans are also afoot for the Sky Mile Tower – a gargantuan possibility which may yet clamber into the firmament above Tokyo. Blueprints for this proposed monster suggest that it will reach 5,577ft (1,700m) – or, as its name rather gives away, just a smidgeon over a complete mile.

Perhaps I am missing the point. Maybe I am failing to heed the old epithet that "size matters". But if you are a tourist hoping to lay eyes on the world’s tallest building, you might be better off seeking out earlier incarnations in Lincoln, Rouen and Cologne – where the genius of the construction is not lost in the overblown enormity of the whole.